I am Australian but I live in Japan, where I teach English at several universities. I'm a member of the Apple Distinguished Educator program. I have two small kids and get inspiration for drawing from the illustrated children's books I read with them.

I'm so grateful for this app, and enjoy seeing everyone's great drawings and abilities (except the teenagers with their anime characters and imaginary friends. I don't enjoy that.) The community is something really enjoyable to me. I'd forgotten that the internet can be a place with friendly communities who enjoy simply sharing an interest that's an end in itself. It's nice that everyone here contributes to a friendly place in cyberspace.

Having said that, some might find it self-contradictory that I once expressed a strong dislike of the repetitive and unoriginal genre of anime "original characters" once in a description and a subsequent comment thread. (I expect that several people will be reading this description as a result of following on reading from that thread.) The shite hit the fan, but I utterly stand by my opinions. I'm not enough of an asshole to comment negatively on any individual's work, but I did unleash hell in a description of a pic of my own, and the teenagers were NOT happy. I was glad to have struck a nerve and to hopefully make a few people realize that originality is decidedly NOT a hallmark of that genre, despite its name. The arguments that came back to me were largely irrelevant, along the lines that people should have the right to draw whatever they want: not a sentiment I ever expressed opposition to. The ensuing discussion did play on my mind for a long time, and I really did question social morés and my adherence to them. You know, I think it's part of my mission in life to stir things up occasionally, and raise people's consciousness to wrong thinking, because heaven knows I've benefited from having my own ideas ridiculed and handed back to me, painful and discomfiting as it is at the time. And yes, I do think that anyone who sees worthwhile originality in the anime original character craze is thinking all wrongly. I stand by that 100%.I might express my opinion on that genre again one day. If I stuck to my current pattern, that will happen some time in 2021, so brace yourself for that.Now, back to being a basically nice person.

I'm a glad patron of this app, and the enjoyment I get out of it daily is far greater than the cost of the app or the patronage. Seriously, there isn't much else on my iPad and iPhone from which I get as much enjoyment.

I also illustrated my own textbook (now in its second edition) for my university classes using this great app, but that's only in printed form, not electronic. I mention it to give credit to the app, that would allow a hack like me to be able to put his name after "illustrated by" in a printed professional-looking publication!